Team Herald
NEW DELHI: Bhartiya Janata Party general secretary Bhupender Yadav on Friday pushed for simultaneous LS and Assembly elections and eight other electoral reforms through a private member’s resolution in the RS. It, however, got deferred as the House took up the budget discussion in the afternoon in place of the listed private member’s business that was shifted to the first Friday (March 9) after the session is resumed.
The resolution that was listed on the day’s agenda calls for amending the election and other related laws forthwith to hold the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections simultaneously “which gives a period of clear five years to the incumbent Government to focus on governance.”
The electoral reforms that Yadav, an MP from Rajasthan, pushed include amendment of laws and rules to facilitate reforms in the electoral cycle “in order to limit election expenditure and avoid wastage of time in electioneering.” Other reforms on his charter are:
n A single electoral roll in the country to weed out duplicate voters, check electoral malpractices and bring down the cost of holding the democratic exercise;
n Introduce e-ballot or e-voting by amending the Constitution and other relevant Acts and Rules to enable all voters, who may be away from their places of residence for different reasons, to exercise their right to franchise online;
n State funding of elections;
n Regulating utilisation of funds by political parties;
n Steps to strengthen democracy, bring transparency in political funding and other necessary reforms;
n Link Aadhaar number with election card; and
n Permit NRIs and Indians staying abroad to cast their votes during elections.
Explaining the purpose of reforms he is seeking, Yadav said the high cost of elections today prevents those with modest financial resources from being competitive in elections resulting inevitably in biased policy decision. His resolution says the Election Commission’s ceiling on campaign expenditure practically remains only on paper as the actual cost of the election campaign is often much higher.
In the absence of the simultaneous elections, he said there is hardly any year without election in the country which is highly time consuming and monumental wastage of financial, manpower and other resources. He also argued that separate elections affect stability, governance, administration and stands as hurdle in attending to peoples’ grievances simultaneously bringing down economic growth because of enforcement of Model Code of Conduct during elections.
